Sports nostalgia was in the cards

September 03, 2004|By Ron Grossman, Tribune staff reporter.

Martin Abramowitz knows what it is like to be a member of a minority group. He was a Yankees fan, who grew up in Brooklyn when loyalty to the Dodgers was a local act of faith. "The landlord had the only television set, and his son was a Yankee fan," said Abramowitz, 64. "The price of admission was to root for that team."

Six or seven years ago, his son Jacob got into baseball-card collecting, and while accompanying him to card shows, Abramowitz caught the bug too. He found himself particularly fascinated by Jewish players' cards.

"As you get older, you get nostalgic," said Abramowitz, an officer with a Jewish charity in Boston. "The only problem was that some Jews had been in the majors too briefly to have had a card."

Jacob said his father should simply make cards for Jewish players who had fallen into sports obscurity. Abramowitz thought it a worthy project, though he hadn't the faintest idea how to pull it off. Then in 2000, Jacob called home from summer camp with another suggestion: One of his campmates was the son of Roger Grass, who heads Fleer, a company that prints baseball cards.

"He and I met on parents' weekend," Abramowitz said.

Grass knew how to get the necessary clearances from organized baseball and the players union. The American Jewish Historical Society provided financing for the card set -- timed for release in 2003, on the eve of this year's celebration of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America.

Abramowitz found the last pieces of the puzzle in Chicago: George Brace, a factory worker and part-time photographer, had long snapped a picture of virtually every visiting-team member to appear in Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park.

"There, in the basement laundry room of the house where Brace lived, was a mother lode of missing images of Jewish players," Abramowitz said.

Seven years after embarking on his quest, Abramowitz is pleased by the result. "I owed it to these forgotten players," he said, "to give them that piece of immortality we call a baseball card."